Retail and other business establishments that serve a large number of customers generally have a problem obtaining transactional information about their customers, such as for identifying new customers and determining transactional patterns for repeat customers (such as transactional frequency and dollar volume).
For those stores that experience a high volume of transactions, an immediate customer information problem is determining whether to authorize a transaction, whether check, debit card or credit card, in the typical situation where the sales clerk does not personally know the purchaser. Beyond this immediate problem of credit verification, these stores have a broader need for gathering transactional information that could be used in developing customer profiles useful in targeting and implementing advertising, marketing and promotions.
For example, a typical grocery store does a high transactional volume with checks comprising a significant percentage of the total transactions (typically as much as 85%). These businesses strive for maximum efficiency in completing transactions at the checkout counter, which results in a minimum of contact between the customer and the sales clerk. In this sales environment, neither clerks nor store managers typically develop any significant personal relationship with an individual customer.
Since check transactions account for such a significant percentage of a grocery store's business, these stores naturally make an effort to minimize the number of bad checks that will be returned. Typically, the store will require an additional piece of identification, such as a driver's license and/or a major credit card. However, this requirement for additional identification reduces the efficiency of the checkout process, and inconveniences the significant majority of check transaction customers who do not write bad checks--typically, a grocery store's bad check experience will be approximately 2% of its check transactions.
Thus, check verification presents a store with problems in customer relations and risk management. A store naturally seeks to improve customer relations with the great majority of customers who do not present check transaction problems by efficiently and quickly authorizing check transactions. However, the store must guard against the financial risks from customers who do write bad checks, either as part of a concerted bad check scheme or as a result of less larcenous conduct that may range from simple bookkeeping mistakes to overly aggressive check floating. In the former case, bad check risk is greatly dependent upon abnormal check transaction activity over a given interval. In the latter cases, the bad check risk is greatly dependent upon check transaction history (total check transaction frequency and dollar volume at a store).
The check transaction risk management problem has two principal aspects--the risk that a person will write a bad check and the risk that a bad check cannot be recovered. Again, both of these risk factors are greatly dependent upon a customer's historical check transaction activity. As the total number of check transactions by a customer at a particular store increases, both the risk that the customer will write a bad check decreases, and more significantly, the risk that store will not be able to recover on a bad check decreases.
For example, a customer with fewer than 200-300 check transactions at a store presents a relatively high risk in terms of recovery on a bad check, while a customer with more than 600-700 check transactions presents a minimal risk. Thus, a store practicing risk management should put substantially more restrictions in terms of check transaction frequency and total dollar volume over given intervals in the former case than in the latter.
These risk management problems are multiplied in the case of multiple store businesses, particularly in the case of concerted bad check cashing schemes. In that case, the typical pattern is to move from store to store within a relatively short period of time. Such credit risks are also present with other forms of financial instruments, such as credit cards, or debit cards unless credit verification procedures are in place.
Beyond these check and credit verification and risk management problems, grocery and other retail stores have a broader problem in accumulating customer information because of the emphasis on minimizing the amount of time required for a sales transaction, and the attendant impersonality of the customer relationship. Thus, it is extremely difficult to develop any meaningful customer profiles, or to identify customer groups such as regular customers and new customers who might become regular customers. If a store could accumulate more detailed customer information, customer profiles could be developed and used for targeted advertising, marketing and promotional programs.
Accordingly, a need exists for a transaction processing system for individual stores (in both single and multiple store environments) that facilitates transactions by improving the efficiency of the verification process, and that maintains a local customer database containing transactional information about the store's customers useful for verification risk management, and for other customer relations purposes such as identifying new customers and profiling regular customers.
Prior credit verification systems require connecting a point-of-sale terminal through telephone lines to a remote transaction processing system, thereby increasing not only the cost of operating the systems, but also increasing the time for providing check or credit verification. Also, existing systems typically do not focus on maintaining a local customer database useful not only for check or credit or debit card transaction processing, but also for identifying new customers and developing customer profiles for regular customers.
In prior systems, information regarding checks returned to a store by its bank is entered into a computer (PC). This PC stores information on that check (name, address, dollar amount of the check, reason for the return of the check, etc.) and this PC can be programmed to transfer that data to other processors controlling point-of-sale keypad terminals, both in the same and in other store-based operations. Responses displayed by one of these point-of-sale terminals may be altered pursuant to these transfers of data. Alternatively, data on returned checks may be entered into a multiple tasking computer environment in which the same processor simultaneously manages the operations of returned check entry and point-of-sale keypad operation. This multiple tasking processor can be programmed to transfer data to other similar store-based operations by telephone communications.
Copending patent application Ser. No. 07/826,255 discloses a system and technique wherein a customer's checking account number may be used as a unique customer identification number to provide credit verification and also to perform marketing functions. In such a prior system, such customer checking account numbers have been manually entered by the retail store clerk, thus causing delay and possible inaccuracies. A need has thus arisen for an automated system for providing quick and efficient check verification and marketing follow-up. Previous automatic readers have, however, not been satisfactory for such purposes, because of their inability to uniformly detect desired account information on all checks in a consistent manner.
Marketing by retail stores has previously been confined to advertising to large segments of the population, and often to existing customers. Competition among stores has made it more important to target advertising, and a need has arisen for marketing techniques to target non-customers or infrequent customers. It would be particularly advantageous if such targeted marketing could be accomplished in conjunction with a check or credit verification system.
Retail stores have heretofore attempted to provide marketing to its customers by the issuing of cards bearing individual numbers associated with a customer (which may or may not be smart cards) which contain information which may be automatically detected by a reader. Before a customer can obtain such a card, the customer has to fill out a substantial amount of information, such information is being entered into the system prior to the card being issued. Stores, however, have found that it is difficult to get a large segment of its customers to provide such information and customers also do not wish to or forget to use such cards at the checkout terminal. Hence, use of such cards for marketing purposes has not been particularly successful.
For example, when such cards are used, another form of financial payment has to be implemented into the system, such as by accepting cash, verifying and accepting a check or verifying and accepting a credit or debit card or the like. Use of such shopping cards thus creates additional delays at the terminals and has not been found to enable stores to reach high-target individuals such as the infrequent shopper, since such people are unlikely to have or to utilize such cards. Moreover, prior stores which have used such shopping cards have tried marketing such as direct mail to an untargeted group of customers or for immediate discounts on current transactions. The providing of such rewards without requiring some future activity by the customer has not been found to provide good marketing results by inducing the customer to do some act in the future.
A need has thus arisen for a method and system utilizable by retail stores to provide targeted incentive marketing to customers by utilizing account codes on such financial instruments as a check, credit card or debit card, without the combination of a marketing card. It would be further advantageous for such a method and system to be able to utilize a multiplicity of transaction documents in order to identify individual customers to enable such targeted marketing. It would further be desirable to provide such targeted marketing in combination with credit verification.